


Gentle in the Night

by ryry_peaches



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (it's light but it's there), Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s12e09 First Blood, Hurt/Comfort, Insomniac Dean, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-09-30 21:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10172540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryry_peaches/pseuds/ryry_peaches
Summary: Coda for 12.09 First BloodCastiel finally has Dean back and he wants nothing more than to hold him.  Dean is too angry over Billie to open the door.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the last leg of this 3K+ angst-fest while listening to "Babel" by Mumford and Sons on repeat.

Dean flips over in bed, presses his face into the pillow and groans, long and low, a deep, mourning sound. Fireworks flash behind his eyelids, green and yellow.

His head throbs.

He kicks the thick-piled blankets off himself, then off the bed, in restless, almost spasmic movements of his legs, and shivers under his cold, sweaty clothes. It’s almost always like this, after a close call -- but _this_ is so much worse. He aches inside, aches like a rock is lodged under his ribcage, longing for his brother, his mom, for his -- for Castiel, but he doesn’t let himself get out of bed. In the weeks of aloneness, of quiet and the grey walls that had become blinding, he’s forgotten how to interact with them. Muscle memory and adrenaline got him out of the autopsy room, through the forest and the whole ordeal with Billie, all the way home and now there’s nothing left, nothing but that rock under his ribs paired with a hole in his gut the size of Texas.

He rolls back over and stares at the ceiling, shadowed in the blue darkness. Reaches down and scrounges until he finds his blanket, then pulls it messily over himself. His eyes burn, and he doesn’t shut them.

  


Seventeen.

That’s how many steps it takes Castiel to walk from his own heavy oak bedroom door to Dean’s and vice versa. He’s been doing it for an hour, back and forth, eight steps with his right foot and nine with his left, and he’s sure that the sturdy, utilitarian carpet is slightly matted where he’s forged a steady path.

In the kitchen, Cas can hear Mary and Sam conversing at the breakfast counter, enjoying one another’s company. It’s four am; neither of them has slept, and he’s not sure when they will. They’re both shaken to the core -- Sam by Mary’s disturbing, Winchester-Standard-Issue capacity for self-sacrifice; Mary, because she hasn’t come this close to losing either of her boys -- to watching years that she wouldn’t have with them spin out in front of her in the eternal second before the darkness closes in -- since her own death, thirty-four years ago.

Mary says something witty and unfeminine, and Sam barks the laugh that Cas has never earned, the one that had been reserved for Dean until their mother’s return. He never knew before that Sam shared a laugh with his mother.

Castiel has never envied the Winchesters much, but he longs for a relationship with a parent, one that isn’t marred by years of willful neglect and pointed ignorance. Sam and Dean have that now.

Cas doesn’t begrudge the boys their tentative, happy relationship with their mother, but he is practically green for it.

He pauses at Dean’s closed door for the seventieth time in as many minutes, and it shocks him from his thoughts. He puts a hand on it. He’s grounding himself on it. His anchor is only on the other side, and for the first time in six weeks he feels almost safe.

 _Almost safe._ Like seeing a bright light in a window, but being unable to reach the house it belongs to.

Unable to reach Dean.

  


Dean hears a noise just outside his door, a low sigh, and then the slight knock of wood-on-wood from someone pressing the door against the frame.

“Go away, Castiel,” he mumbles -- or maybe he doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter, because Cas hears him. The sense of having company disappears, and he knows that he’s been obeyed.

  


Sam looks up from his third -- or maybe his fourth -- coffee and offers a weak but genuine smile when Castiel darkens the kitchen doorway. He knows he should be angry with Cas, should blame him, but the fact is that his entire family is alive and home and _safe_ and twelve hours ago, he was prepared to die. So as anxious as he is about Billie and whatever cosmic consequences have been unleashed, he can’t hate Cas for keeping his mom alive. He refuses to be angry about that. “Still up?”

Cas tilts his head. “I don’t need to sleep.”

Sam can’t help but smile a bit; after all these years he’s still not over how endearingly naive Castiel can be -- and how odd it is to be endeared toward an angel. “Well, I know that,” he says as patiently as he can when there’s this much caffeine and adrenaline in his veins, “but I figured after six weeks that you’d be with --” A feeling of sudden realization and a cold shot of guilt strikes him. “That you’d be, um…” He trails awkwardly, with a contrite glance between Mary and Castiel.

Mary simply looks amused. “You aren’t pulling anything over on me, kid. I wasn’t actually _born_ this year.” She turns to address Cas. “Anyone can see you and my son are, well.” She smiles an odd sort of smile, lips pursed, almost indulgent. “Whatever you are.”

Cas nods slowly. Apprehensively. “I didn’t say anything. It’s not my place. I understand that these things are…different…for humans. I wouldn’t betray Dean’s trust.”

Her smile fades slowly. “It takes a very special person to adapt to this life. I know you’ve made a lot of sacrifices for these boys,” she says with a soft, sad look. “So it’s fine with me that you’re with my boy, though I’m not sure why you felt the need to hide it from me.”

Cas avoids her eyes. “I’m given to believe that their father…wasn’t so accepting,” he says softly. He glances at Sam.

Sam gets the same punch-to-the-gut feeling that reliably accompanies any mention of John’s parenting. He tries to send his mom a reassuring smile, but she -- thank God -- seems to have glossed right over that statement in her mind.

“And I don’t have to warn you that if you hurt him --”

“You’re quite adept at threats,” Cas responds.

She grins again. More than slightly giddy, Cas thinks -- and a bit drunk. His eyes haven't missed the bottle of Kahlua on the table.

“Okay, hey, enough deflecting,” Sam breaks in, his curiosity and concern undeterred by the slightly sobering subject change. “Why _aren’t_ you with Dean? I figured he turned in so early to be with you.” He searches Cas’ tired face.

“He wants to be alone,” Cas says softly, looking ashamed of how flimsy it sounds -- and how pathetic, and pedestrian.

“He wants -- that’s such bullshit,” Sam groans. It’s a crap excuse. “Is it because of tonight? Is he ticked at you now?”

Cas shrugs and refuses to look Sam or Mary in their prodding eyes.

“God,” Sam says with a vicious eye-roll. “I get it, I mean -- but you saved us. You saved _mom._ We’ve all done really stupid shit to keep each other alive. There’s nothing any of us can do about it now. Maybe he could try a little gratitude --”

 _“Enough,”_ Cas says, loudly and evenly. “He has every right to be angry with me. I knew what I was doing. It doesn’t matter -- he can sulk at me for the rest of his natural life if he’s here to do it. I’m not sorry.” He lifts his chin and Sam can see him for every inch the warrior he once was, proud and righteous and sure. But he knows that Castiel isn’t sure, that for all the fronting, the bravado, he hasn’t felt like he was on even footing for a long time.

“No,” Mary says suddenly. “No, it’s not okay. You did what you had to --”

“Mary, you haven’t been here,” Castiel says, and for the first time he looks something besides resigned and exhausted -- he looks just a little angry. _“You haven’t been here._ You haven’t seen how all this righteous self-sacrifice plays out. You weren’t there when your sons started a Biblical armageddon, nor when they stopped it. Not when Dean was in purgatory or when Sam lost his soul --” Mary shoots Sam a wide-eyed look, and Cas suddenly feels bad, but he presses on. “I’ve seen the kind of cosmic consequences Billie laid out for us, and Dean should be angry.”

Mary’s lips go white. She swallows. Swallows again. Sam feels an emotional cocktail at the outburst mixing in the bottom of his stomach -- somewhere between empathy and anger -- and puts a hand on his mother’s shoulder. It dwarves her comically, and he feels weighed down with the absurdity of the whole day.

“Mom, it’s okay,” he says softly. “Cas, man, you’re not wrong, okay? I get where Dean’s coming from too, I think we’ve all fucked up on this scale, but Dean needs to suck it up. And he shouldn’t be alone right now -- that place, it screwed with him. He needs to know you’re still here. Solid ground, y’know?”

Cas sighs. “Sam --”

“No arguing. Go be with him,” Sam orders. “You’ve never walked away from him before for fighting you.”

Castiel nods. Turns and walks out, his omnipresent coat billowing slightly behind him.

  


Dean hears it again, the sound of footsteps outside his door, before the heavy sound of a fist hitting it. Twice.

“Thought I told you to go ‘way, Cas,” Dean grumbles into his pillow. “Not in the mood to talk to you.”

The doorknob rattles. “Dean, open the door.”

“Not gonna happen.” It’s weird to talk and hear a response -- he did plenty of talking to himself in the cell, sung his off-key way through every song he knew, but to have someone on the other side, that’s something to get used to. 

He’d gone through Seger and Zeppelin and even Bon fuckin’ Jovi. Hoping that someone -- a guard -- would at the very least pound on the door and tell him to shut his fucking mouth. Hoping that maybe that bridge of dialogue could get him some leverage, that maybe if he couldn’t _Shawshank_ his way out then he could pull a Hannibal Lecter à la _Silence of the Lambs_ and manipulate his way out.

But they didn’t take the goddamned bait. Dean couldn’t get himself out. Couldn’t get Sammy out. Had to beg and bargain for help, and now there’s an unnamed hammer over his entire family’s collective head and _it’s his fault._  


Cas sighs heavily for what feels like the millionth time.

  


“Dean,” Cas says, and his voice is much closer. Dean rolls over on his back to glare at him.

“Told you to go away,” he mumbles.

“Yes, and I didn’t,” he says. He keeps his face carefully blank, his voice neutral. “I’m not leaving you alone, you’ve been alone for weeks.” He takes off his coat and drapes it over the desk chair. “Deal with it.”

“You’re a huge pain in my ass,” Dean says. “After what you pulled tonight --”

“If I hadn’t pulled that, your mother would be dead.” Cas doesn’t say it meanly, but rather like he’s explaining a difficult concept to someone who can’t seem to get it. “It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but we didn’t have time, Dean.”

Dean sets his jaw and stares at the ceiling. _You can stay, but I won’t engage with you._

  


Cas sighs and sits on the edge of the bed. “I missed you,” he says softly.

Not so much as a blink in response.

“I missed both of you; it was worse than mourning. I couldn’t find you. Mary blamed me, and she was right. It _was_ my fault. I was so worried about catching Kline and I left you both.

I kept reaching for your hand, and then when my hand fell through open air -- it felt like I was falling, as well.”

Dean’s jaw works now, unable to keep from responding in any way when Cas is just _talking_ at him like this.

“I prayed,” Cas whispers.

The words hang there, heavy and laden with stale despair.

“I prayed, and he responded, for once. _‘You’ve always figured it out, Son.’_ I hope the old bastard is satisfied --”

“Don’t,” Dean says finally. “You shouldn’t talk about your dad like that.”

Cas shakes his head. “He hasn’t --”

“I don’t _care,”_ Dean breaks in. “You think my old man wasn’t a deadbeat and a drunk? But I’d give anything to get him back. That's family. They piss you off. They don't always show up for you, but _dammit,_ Cas...”

Cas nods. “Okay. You’re right. I am sorry.” He reaches for Dean’s hand where it rests facing up on the bed.

Dean rips it away, turns onto his side, stares at the wall away from Cas.

“Dean…”

Dean keeps his mouth shut.

“Did you not miss me?”

  


It echoes in Dean’s mind. _Did you not miss me, miss me, miss me?_ It’s such a stupid question. Did he miss Cas? Did he feel equally emptier and heavier with every passing day, rotting away and having no way of knowing when, _if_ he would see his brother, or his -- Cas -- again? How could Cas doubt him so much as to question whether he _missed_ him? Does he know that Cas was reaching for his hand because sometimes, Castiel feels like he’s spiralling out of orbit and he once confided that Dean’s touch is the only thing in these moments that keeps him firmly attached to the earth?

“I didn’t miss your dumbass questions,” he says finally, coldly, because it’s what a question like that deserves.

Behind him, the bed shifts as Cas crumbles a bit, his back arching forward, and he drops his head into his hands, elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t…that was selfish.”

Dean grunts. _Yeah._ His head swims, Castiel’s words and the unspoken implications of them bouncing around his skull, the fireworks back even though his eyes are open. He watches the patterns of them dance across the wall, his dresser, the edge of the ceiling.

He swallows hard, and very suddenly -- or maybe it’s already been happening and he’s just forgotten how time moves, in the six weeks that it hasn’t at all -- there are tears streaming down his face. They warm his eyes, and he gasps silently, feeling like something in his gut is loosening, unclenching like a fist.

“Dean?” Cas stands and stares down at him, nervous, concerned, unsure.

Dean rolls off the bed _\-- I have to get away from him from him alone have to be alone been alone leave me alone --_ and drops roughly to his knees. He clutches his stomach and presses his forehead to the rough carpet and lets out a high whining breath, like a suffering animal.

  


Cas thinks he knows what this is -- the word _panic_ flashes across his mind -- knows that the adrenaline has finally abandoned Dean’s veins and he’s crashing hard. It’s ripping out the careful, cold numbness that’s mostly encased him today, and every emotion he’s felt only vaguely in the back of his mind is now crashing forward like a tidal wave of fear and anger and the bitter taste of the feral instincts that got him and Sam out of the park today, washing against the front of his skull and falling back across him.

He can’t do anything to help this now.

“I, I, I,” Dean says in rough little gasps that rock his body.

Cas instinctively crosses around the bed and drops to his knees an arm’s length from Dean. “You don’t have to talk,” he says softly, sternly. “Don’t talk.”

  


Dean shudders and the world flashes around him -- yellow, red, yellow, green, red, blue, yellow -- his chest burns and from a distance, across a ravine he hears a muffled voice. “Have you don’t to talk talk don’t,” it says, and Dean has no clue what it means. What if it’s important? He tries to suck in breath.

  


Cas waits and watches, letting Dean ride out the attack. It’s violent and clearly painful, but it’s short, and it sees Dean panting on the floor, lying on his back with his legs spread in an unnatural looking position. Dean’s face is covered with snot and sweat and tears, blotchy and red and swollen. It’s ugly, and Cas has never wanted more to kiss it, to press his lips to Dean’s forehead and feel all that warm messy life beneath them.

“Let me take care of you, please,” he says gently.

Dean nods, weakly, a few tears still finding their way down his face.

  


Warm hands grab Dean under his arms like a child and deposit him gently so that he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. They strip him slowly and methodically, tugging off his t-shirt and boxers. He acquiescently lifts his arms and shifts his hips accordingly. A soft cloth wipes his face gently, removing all the gunk there. New boxers, but no shirt seems forthcoming.

“Shirt,” he says, sounding so much to his own ears like a child. He realizes his eyes are closed, wonders when he shut them, doesn’t open them.

A shirt appears, and the apparently obliging hands urge his arms up to get it on.

The hands push his shoulders gently until his head hits the pillow. He opens his eyes.

“Cas’iel,” he says. His tongue is heavy. “Stay.”

“You’re angry with me,” Cas says carefully.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. He thinks he’s slurring a bit. “Stay anyway.”

  


Castiel kicks off his shoes gently, takes off his tie and then his shirt and drapes them over the chair with the coat. Slowly, carefully, as though approaching a timid and semi-feral animal, he pulls back the covers and urges Dean into them. He goes to pat Dean on the butt out of habit -- still after these weeks apart -- his usual way of silently, gently saying _move over_ \-- and pulls his hand back before it makes contact. “Dean,” he says uncertainly.

Dean sighs heavily and rolls his eyes. “Get in,” he says heavily, wriggling to the side. His head throbs. “But don’t think this means you’re forgiven.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Cas says, and tries to keep the hurt out of his voice; this isn’t about him, it’s about helping Dean down from his panic attack, helping him relax and breathe and get some good sleep for the first time in more than a month and a half. But it stings to his core to know that Dean can’t -- won’t -- forgive him this.

He undoes his belt and swiftly kicks off his pants, and carefully, without touching Dean, he lies down on his back.

Dean huffs -- derisively, Cas thinks. “Turn over,” he says, like it’s taking all his energy and effort, and like there’s a heavily implied suffix of _you idiot._

Cas turns away at Dean’s urging, rolls onto his side. He hears the rustling of fabric behind him, feels the weight shift, and then Dean’s wrapped around him like a giant tequila-breathed koala. He feels Dean hook his chin over his shoulder, and he turns his head, craning his neck, hopes he’s not crossing a line, presses a soft kiss to Dean’s temple.

“Why did you do it?” Dean says, his voice wrecked, his brow tense, the solid thump of his pulse throbbing under his skull. “Why -- you don’t even know Mom -- why is it worth it to you?”

“Dean,” Cas whispers tenderly, and reaches his hand up and out from his side to catch Dean’s clammy cheek. The gentle utterance hangs, heavy and obstructive in the air around them, for a long time.

Finally, when Dean goes so limp and soft against Cas’s back, when his soft snoring rushes a breeze against Cas’ earlobe, he says in the softest voice he can muster, “I love you.”

  


Dean pulls away and rolls over. It would be easy for Cas to roll out of the bed, wouldn’t even disturb Dean. He could leave, hide out in his own room, and not have to deal with Dean’s ire in the morning.

  


Cas stays.

**Author's Note:**

> visit my [tumblr,](fourget-regret.tumblr.com) where you can watch me rave about musical theatre, Disney, and whatever TV shows I'm hooked on. It's also where you can drop prompts into my askbox, so if there's a fic you're itching for and you love my style, don't be shy!!


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